From Russian Silhouettes: More Stories of Russian Life,
by Anton Tchekoff, translated from the Russian by
Marian Fell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
October, 1915.

Volodia

By Anton Chekhov

ONE Sunday evening in spring Volodia, a plain,
shy, sickly lad of seventeen, was sitting, a prey
to melancholy, in a summer-house on the country
place of the Shumikins. His gloomy reflections
flowed in three different channels. In the first
place, to-morrow, Monday, he would have to take an
examination in mathematics. He knew that if he
did not pass he would be expelled from school, as
he had already been two years in the sixth grade.
In the second place, his pride suffered constant
agony during his visits to the Shumikins, who were
rich people with aristocratic pretensions. He
imagined that Madame Shumikin and her nieces
looked down upon his mother and himself as poor
relations and dependents, and that they made fun
of his mother and did not respect her. He had
once overheard Madame Shumikin saying on the
terrace to her cousin Anna Feodorovna that she was
still pretending to be young, and that she never
paid her debts and had a great hankering after
other people's shoes and cigarettes. Every day
Volodia would implore his mother not to go to the
Shumikins' again. He painted for her the
humiliating rôle which she played among
these people, he entreated her and spoke rudely to
her, but the spoiled, frivolous woman, who had
wasted two fortunes in her day, her own and her
husband's, yearned for high life and refused to
understand him, so that twice every week Volodia
was obliged to accompany her to the hated house.

In the third place, the lad could not free
himself for a moment from a certain strange,
unpleasant feeling that was entirely new to him.
He imagined himself to be in love with Anna
Feodorovna, the cousin and guest of Madame
Shumikin. Anna Feodorovna was a talkative,
lively, laughing little lady of thirty; healthy,
rosy, and strong, with plump shoulders, a plump
chin, and an eternal smile on her thin lips. She
was neither pretty nor young. Volodia knew this
perfectly well, and for that very reason he was
unable to refrain from thinking of her, from
watching her as she bent her plump shoulders over
her croquet mallet, or, as she, after much
laughter and running up and down-stairs, sank all
out of breath into a chair, and with half-closed
eyes pretended that she felt a tightness and
strangling across the chest. She was married, and
her husband was a staid architect who came down
into the country once a week, had a long sleep,
and then returned to the city. This feeling on
Volodia's part began with an unreasoning hatred of
the architect, and a sensation of joy whenever he
returned to the city.

And now, as he sat in the summer-house thinking
about to-morrow's examination and his mother, whom
every one laughed at, he felt a great longing to
see Nyuta, as the Shumikins called Anna
Feodorovna, and to hear her laughter and the
rustling of her dress. This longing did not
resemble the pure, poetic love of which he had
read in novels, and of which he dreamed every
night as he went to bed. It was a strange and
incomprehensible thing, and he was ashamed and
afraid of it as of something wicked and wrong
which he hardly dared to acknowledge even to
himself.

"This is not love," he thought.
"One does not fall in love with a woman of
thirty. It is simply a little intrigue; yes, it
is a little intrigue."

Thinking about intrigues, he remembered his
invincible shyness, his lack of a moustache, his
freckles, his little eyes, and pictured himself
standing beside Nyuta. The contrast was
impossible. So he hastened to imagine himself
handsome and bold and witty, dressed in the latest
fashion. . . .

In the very heat of his imaginings, as he sat
huddled in a dark corner of the summer-house with
his eyes fixed on the ground, he heard light
footsteps approaching. Some one was hurrying down
the garden path. The footsteps ceased and a
figure clad in white gleamed in the doorway.

"Is any one there?" asked a woman's
voice.

Volodia recognised the voice and raised his
head in alarm.

"Who is there?" asked Nynta, stepping
into the summer-house. "Ah, is it you,
Volodia? What are you doing in there? Brooding?
How can you always be brooding and brooding? It's
enough to drive you crazy!"

Volodia rose and looked at Nyuta in confusion.
She was on her way back from the bath-house; a
Turkish towel hung across her shoulders, and a few
damp locks of hair had escaped from under her
white silk kerchief and were clinging to her
forehead. She exhaled the cool, damp odour of the
river, and the scent of almond soap. The upper
button of her blouse was undone, so that her neck
and throat were visible to the lad.

"Why don't you say something?" asked
Nyuta, looking Volodia up and down. "It. is
rude not to answer when a lady speaks to you.
What a stick-in-the-mud you are, Volodia, always
sitting and thinking like some stodgy old
philosopher, and never opening your mouth! You
have no vim in you, no fire! You are horrid,
really! A boy of your age ought to live, and
frisk, and chatter, and fall in love, and make
love to the ladies."

Volodia stared at the towel which she was
holding in her plump, white hand and pondered.

"He won't answer!" cried Nyuta in
surprise. "This is too strange, really!
Listen to me, be a man! At least smile! Bah!
What a horrid dry-as-dust you are!" she
laughed . "Volodia, do you know what makes
you such a boor? It's because you never make
love. Why don't you do it? There are no girls
here, I know, but what is to prevent you from
making love to a woman? Why don't you make love
to me, for instance?"

Volodia listened to her and rubbed his forehead
in intense, painful irresolution.

"It is only proud people who never speak
and like to be alone," Nyuta continued,
pulling his hand down from his forehead.
"You are proud, Volodia. Why do you squint
at me like that? Look me in the eye, if you
please. Now then, stick-in-the-mud!"

Volodia made up his mind to speak. In an
effort to smile he stuck out his lower lip,
blinked his eyes, and his hand again went to his
head.

"I--I love you!" he exclaimed.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in astonishment and
burst out laughing.

"What is this I hear?" she chanted as
singers do in an opera when they hear a terrible
piece of liews. "What? What did you say?
Say it again! Say it again!"

"I--I love you!" Volodia repeated.

And involuntarily, without premeditation and
not realising what he was doing, he took a step
toward Nyuta and seized her arm above the wrist.
Tears started into his eyes, and the whole world
seemed to turn into a huge Turkish towel smelling
of the river.

Seeing that he was permitted to hold her arm,
Volodia looked into Nyuta's laughing face and
awkwardly, uneasily, put both arms around her
waist, bringing his wrists together behind her
back. As he held her thus, she put her hands
behind her head showing the dimples in her elbows,
and, arranging her hair under her kerchief, she
said in a quiet voice:

"I want you to become bright and agreeable
and charming, Volodia, and this you can only
accomplish through the influence of women. Why,
what a horrid cross face you have! You ought to
laugh and talk. Honestly, Volodia, don't be a
stick! You are young yet; you wili have plenty of
time for philosophising later on. And now, let me
go. I'm in a hurry to get back. Let me go, I
tell you!"

She freed herself without effort, and went out
of the summer-house singing a snatch of song.
Volodia was left alone. He smoothed his hair,
smiled, and walked three times round the
summer-house. Then he sat down and smiled again.
He felt an unbearable sense of mortification, and
even marvelled that human shame could reach such a
point of keenness and intensity. The feeling made
him smile again and wring his hands and whisper a
few incoherent phrases.

He felt humiliated because he had just been
treated like a little boy, and because he was so
shy, but chiefly because he had dared to put his
arms around the waist of a respectable married
woman, when neither his age nor, as he thought,
his social position, nor his appearance warranted
such an act.

He jumped up and, without so much as a glance
behind him, hurried away into the depths of the
garden, as far away from the house as he could go.

"Oh, if we could only get away from here
at once!" he thought, seizing his head in his
hands. "Oh, quickly, quickly!"

The train on which Volodia and his mother were
to go back to town left at eight-forty. There
still remained three hours before train time, and
he would have liked to have gone to the station at
once without waiting for his mother.

At eight o'clock he turned toward the house.
His whole figure expressed determination and
seemed to be proclaiming: "Come what may, I
am prepared for anything!" He had made up his
mind to go in boldly, to look every one straight
in the face, and to speak loudly no matter what
happened.

He crossed the terrace, passed through the
drawing-room and the living-room, and stopped in
the hall to catch his breath. He could hear the
family at tea in the adjoining dining-room; Madame
Shumikin, his mother, and Nyuta were discussing
something with laughter.

Volodia listened.

"I assure you I could scarcely believe my
eyes!" Nyuta cried. "I hardly
recognised him when he began to make love to me,
and actually--will you believe it?--put his arms
around my waist! He has quite a way with him!
When he told me that he loved me, he had the look
of a wild animal, like a Circassian."

"You don't say so!" cried his mother,
rocking with long shrieks of laughter. "You
don't say so! How like his father he is!"

Volodia jumped back, and rushed out into the
fresh air.

"How can they all talk about it?" he
groaned, throwing up his arms and staring with
horror at the sky. "Aloud, and in cold
blood, too! And mother laughed! Mother! Oh,
God, why did you give me such a mother? Oh,
why?"

But enter the house he must, happen what might.
He walked three times round the garden, and then,
feeling more composed, he went in.

"Why didn't you come in to tea on
time?" asked Madame Shumikin sternly.

"Excuse me, it--it is time for me to
go--" Volodia stammered, without raising his
eyes. "Mother, it is eight o'clock!"

"He reminds one a little of Lermontov,
doesn't he?" Volodia managed to take leave of
the company somehow without looking any one in the
face, and ten minutes later he was striding along
the road to the station, glad to be off at last.
He now no longer felt frightened or ashamed, and
could breathe deeply and freely once more.

Half a mile from the station he sat down on a
stone by the wayside and began looking at the sun,
which was now half hidden behind the horizon. A
few small lights were already gleaming here and
there near the station, and a dim green ray shone
out, but the train had not yet appeared. It was
pleasant to sit there quietly, watching the night
slowly creeping across the fields. The dim
summer-house, Nyuta's light footsteps, the smell
of the bath-house, her laughter, and her
waist--all these things rose up before Volodia's
fancy with startling vividness, and now no longer
seemed terrible and significant to him as they had
a few hours before.

"What nonsense! She did not pull her hand
away; she laughed when I put my arm around her
waist," he thought. "Therefore she must
have enjoyed it. If she had not liked it she
would have been angry--"

Volodia was vexed now at not having been
bolder. He regretted that he was stupidly running
away, and was convinced that, were the same
circumstances to occur again, he would be more
manly and look at the thing more simply--

But it would not be hard to bring those
circumstances about. The Shumikins always
strolled about the garden for a long time after
supper. If Volodia were to go walking with Nyuta
in the dark--there would be the chance to re-enact
the same scene!

"I'll go back and leave on an early train
to-morrow morning," he decided. "I'll
tell them I missed this train."

So he went back. Madame Shumikin, his mother,
Nynta, and one of the nieces were sitting on the
terrace playing cards. When Volodia told them his
story about having missed the train they were
uneasy lest he should be late for his examination,
and advised him to get up early next morning.
Volodia sat down at a little distance from the
card-players, and during the whole game kept his
eyes fixed on Nyuta. He had already determined on
a plan. He would go up to Nyuta in the dark, take
her hand, and kiss her. It would not be necessary
for either to speak; they would understand one
another without words.

But the ladies did not go walking after supper;
they continued their game instead. They played
until one o'clock, and then all separated for the
night.

"How stupid this is!" thought
Volodia, with annoyance. "But never mind,
I'll wait until to-morrow. To-morrow in the
summer-house--never mind!"

He made no effort to go to sleep, but sat on
the edge of his bed with his arms around his knees
and thought. The idea of the examination was
odious to him. He had already made up his mind
that he was going to be expelled, and that there
was nothing terrible about that. On the contrary,
it was a good thing, a very good thing. To-morrow
he would be as free as a bird. He would leave off
his schoolboy's uniform for civilian clothes,
smoke in public, and come over here to make love
to Nyuta whenever he liked. He would be a young
man. As for what people called his career and his
future, that was perfectly clear. Volodia would
not enter the government service, but would become
a telegraph operator or have a drug store, and
become a pharmaceutist. Were there not plenty of
careers open to a young man? An hour passed, two
hours passed, and he was still sitting on the edge
of his bed and thinking

At three o'clock, when it was already light,
his door was cautiously pushed open and his mother
came into the room.

"Aren't you asleep yet?" she asked
with a yawn. "Go to sleep, go to sleep.
I've just come in for a moment to get a bottle of
medicine."

"For whom?"

"Poor Lily is ill again. Go to sleep,
child, you have an examination to-morrow."

She took a little bottle out of the closet,
held it to the window, read the label, and went
out.

"Oh, Maria, that isn't it!" he heard
a woman s voice exclaim. "That is Eau de
Cologne, and Lily wants morphine. Is your son
awake? Do ask him to find it!"

The voice was Nyuta's. Volodia's heart stopped
beating. He hastily put on his trousers and coat
and went to the door.

"Do you understand? I want
morphine!" explained Nyuta in a whisper.
"It is probably written in Latin. Wake
Volodia, he will be able to find it!"

Volodia's mother opened the door, and he caught
sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same blouse
she had worn when she came from the bath-house.
Her hair was hanging loose, and her face looked
sleepy and dusky in the dim light.

"There, Volodia is awake!" she
exclaimed. "Volodia, do get me the morphine
out of the closet, there's a good boy. What a
nuisance Lily is! She always has something the
matter with her."

The mother murmured something, yawned, and went
away.

"Come, find it!" cried Nyuta.
"What are you standing there for?"

Volodia went to the closet, knelt down, and
began searching among the bottles of medicine and
pill-boxes there. His hands were trembling and
cold chills were running down his chest and back.
He aimlessly seized bottles of ether, carbolic
acid, and various boxes of herbs in his shaking
hands, spilling and scattering the contents. The
smell overpowered him and made his head swim.

"Mother has gone--" he thought.
"That's good--good."

"Hurry!" cried Nynta.

"Just a moment--there, this must be
it!" said Volodia having deciphered the
letters "morph--" on one of the labels.
"Here it is!"

Nyuta was standing in the doorway with one foot
in the hall and one in Volodia's room. She was
twisting up her hair--which was no easy matter,
for it was long and thick--and was looking
vacantly at Volodia. In the dim radiance shed by
the white, early mormng sky, with her full blouse
and her flowing hair, she looked to him superb and
entrancing. Fascinated, trembling from head to
foot, and remembering with delight how he had
embraced her in the summer-house, he handed her
the bottle and said:

"You are--"

"What?" she asked smiling.

He said nothing; he looked at her, and then, as
he had done in the summer-house, he seized her
hand.

"I love you--" he whispered.

Volodia felt as if the room and Nyuta, and the
dawn, and he himself had suddenly rushed together
into a keen, unknown feeling of happiness for
which he was ready to give his whole life and lose
his soul for ever, but half a minute later it all
suddenly vanished.

"Well, I must go--" said Nyuta,
looking contemptuously at Volodia. "What a
pitiful, plain boy you are-- Bah, you ugly
duckling!"

How hideous her long hair, her full blouse, her
footsteps and her voice now seemed to him!

The sun rose; the birds broke into song; the
sound of the gardener's footsteps and the creaking
of his wheelbarrow rose from the garden. The cows
lowed and the notes of a shepherd's pipe trembled
in the air. The sunlight and all these manifold
sounds proclaimed that somewhere in the world
there could be found a life that was pure, and
gracious, and poetic. Where was it? Neither
Volodia's mother, nor any one of the people who
surrounded the boy had ever spoken of it to him.

When the man servant came to call him for the
morning train, he pretended to be asleep.

"Oh, to thunder with it all!" he
thought.

He got up at eleven. As he brushed his hair
before the mirror he looked at his plain face, so
pale after his sleepless night, and thought:

"She is quite right. I really am an ugly
duckling."

When his mother saw him and seemed horrified at
his not having gone to take his examination,
Volodia said:

"I overslept, mamma, but don't worry; I
can give them a certificate from the doctor."

Madame Shumikin and Nyuta woke at one o'clock.
Volodia heard the former throw open her window
with a bang, and heard Nyuta's ringing laugh
answer her rough voice. He saw the dining-room
door flung open and the nieces and dependents,
among whom was his mother, troop in to lunch. He
saw Nyuta's freshly washed face, and beside it the
black eyebrows and beard of the architect, who had
just come.

Nyuta was in Little Russian costume, and this
was not becoming to her and made her look clumsy.
The architect made some vulgar, insipid jests, and
Volodia thought that there were a terrible lot of
onions in the stew that day. He also thought that
Nyuta was laughing loudly and looking in his
direction on purpose to let him understand that
the memory of last night did not worry her in the
least, and that she scarcely noticed the presence
at table of the ugly duckling.

At four o'clock Volodia and his mother drove to
the station. The lad's sordid memories, his
sleepless night, and the pangs of his conscience
aroused in him a feeling of painful and gloomy
anger. He looked at his mother's thin profile, at
her little nose, and at the rain-coat that had
been a gift to her from Nyuta, and muttered:

"Why do you powder your face? It does not
become you at all! You try to look pretty, but
you don't pay your debts, and you smoke cigarettes
that aren't yours! It's disgusting! I don't like
you, no, I don't, I don't!"

So he insulted her, but she only rolled her
eyes in terror and, throwing up her hands, said in
a horrified whisper:

"What are you saying? Heavens, the
coachman will hear you! Do hush, he can hear
everything!"

"I don't like you! I don't like
you!" he went on, struggling for breath.
"You are without morals or heart. Don't dare
to wear that rain-coat again, do you hear me? If
you do, I'll tear it to shreds!"

"Where is my father's fortune? Where is
your own? You have squandered them both. I am
not ashamed of my poverty, but I am ashamed of my
mother. I blush whenever the boys at school ask
me about you."

The village was two stations from town. During
the whole journey Volodia stood on the platform of
the car, trembling from head to foot, not wanting
to go inside because his mother, whom he hated,
was sitting there. He hated himself, and the
conductor, and the smoke of the engine, and the
cold to which he ascribed the shivering fit that
had seized him. The heavier his heart grew, the
more convinced he became that somewhere in the
world there must be people who lived a pure,
noble, warm-hearted, gracious life, full of love,
and tenderness, and merriment, and freedom. He
felt this and suffered so keenly from the thought
that one of the passengers looked intently at him,
and said:

"You must have a toothache!"

Volodia and his mother lived with a widow who
rented a large apartment and let rooms to lodgers.
His mother had two rooms, one with windows where
her own bed stood, and another adjoining it, which
was small and dark, where Volodia lived. A sofa,
on which he slept, was the only furniture of this
little room; all the available space was taken up
by trunks full of dresses, and by hat-boxes and
piles of rubbish which his mother had seen fit to
collect. Volodia studied his lessons in his
mother's room, or in the "parlour," as
the large room was called, where the lodgers
assembled before dinner and in the evening.

On reaching home, Volodia threw himself down on
his sofa and covered himself with a blanket,
hoping to cure his shivering fit. The hat-boxes,
the trunks, and the rubbish, all proclaimed to him
that he had no room of his own, no corner in which
he could take refuge from his mother, her guests,
and the voices that now assailed his ears from the
parlour. His school satchel and the books that
lay scattered about the floor reminded him of the
examination he had missed. Quite unexpectedly
there rose before his eyes a vision of Mentone,
where he had lived with his father when he was
seven years old. He recalled Biarritz, and two
little English girls with whom he had played on
the beach. He vainly tried to remember the colour
of the sky, and the ocean, and the height of the
waves, and how he had then felt; the little
English girls flashed across his vision with all
the vividness of life, but the rest of the picture
was confused and gradually faded away.

"It is too cold here," Volodia
thought. He got up, put on his overcoat, and went
into the parlour.

The inmates of the house were assembled there
at tea. His mother, an old maid music teacher
with horn spectacles, and Monsieur Augustin, a fat
Frenchman, who worked in a perfume factory, were
sitting near the samovar.

"I haven't had dinner to-day," his
mother was saying. "I must send the maid for
some bread."

"Duniash!" shouted the Frenchman.

It appeared that the maid had been sent on an
errand by her mistress.

"Oh, no matter!" said the Frenchman,
smiling broadly. "I go for the bread myself!
Oh, no matter!"

He laid down his strong, reeking cigar in a
conspicuous place, put on his hat, and went out.

When he had gone, Volodia's mother began
telling the music teacher of her visit to Madame
Shumikin's, and of the enthusiastic reception she
had had there.

"Lily Shumikin is a relative of mine, you
know," she said. "Her husband, General
Shumikin, was a cousin of my husband's. She was
the Baroness Kolb before her marriage.''

Now he knew that his mother was not lying, and
that in her account of General Shumikin and
Baroness Koib there was not a word of untruth, but
he felt none the less as if she were lying. The
tone of her voice, the expression of her face, her
glance--all were false.

"It's a lie!" Volodia repeated,
bringing his fist down on the table with such a
bang that the cups and saucers rattled and mamma
spilled her tea. "What makes you talk about
generals and baronesses? It's all a lie!"

The music teacher was embarrassed and coughed
behind her handkerchief, as if she had swallowed a
crumb. Mamma burst into tears.

"How can I get away from here?"
thought Volodia. He was ashamed to go to the
house of any of his school friends. Once more he
unexpectedly remembered the two little English
girls. He walked across the parlour and into
Monsieur Augustin's room. There the air smelled
strongly of volatile oils and glycerine soap.
Quantities of little bottles full of liquids of
various colours cluttered the table, the
window-sills, and even the chairs. Volodia took
up a paper and read the heading: "Le
Figaro." The paper exhaled a strong and
pleasant fragrance. He picked up a revolver that
lay on the table.

"There, there, don't mind what he
says!" the music teacher was consoling his
mother in the next room. "He is still young,
and young men always do foolish things. We must
make up our minds to that."

"No, Miss Eugenia, he has been
spoiled," moaned his mother. "There is
no one who has any authority over him, and I am
too weak to do anything. Oh, I am very
unhappy."

Volodia put the barrel of the revolver into his
mouth, felt something which he thought was the
trigger, and pulled-- Then he found another little
hook and pulled again. He took the revolver out
of his mouth and examined the lock. He had never
held a firearm in his hands in his life.

"I suppose this thing ought to be
raised," he thought. "Yes, I think that
is right."

Monsieur Augustin entered the parlour laughing
and began to recount some adventure he had had on
the way. Volodia once more put the barrel into
his mouth, seized it between his teeth, and pulled
a little hook he felt with his fingers. A shot
rang out-- something hit him with tremendous force
in the back of the neck, and he fell forward upon
the table with his face among the bottles and
glasses. He saw his father wearing a high hat
with a wide silk band, because he was wearing
mourning for some lady in Mentone, and felt
himself suddenly seized in his arms and fall with
him into a very deep, black abyss.